You can make Popeyes Red Beans any day with these beans, and here we use spices right out of your own kitchen cabinet to create the Cajun flavor. The ham hock in this recipe provides a wonderfully smoky flavor that infuses the beans. The lard is a key ingredient here, as this type of rendered fat gives the dish a lot of its Old South flavor. Lard is found in most grocery stores where solid shortening is sold.

Please note: Their actual recipe contains no meat. I find the smoke flavor from a ham hock to be better than from liquid smoke. This is my reasoning for this recommendation.

Popeyes Red Beans

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Instructions

Pour 2 cans of beans with their liquid into a 2-quart pan. Add the smoked ham hock and water. Bring the pan to a simmer on medium heat for an hour, until the meat starts to loosen from the bone.

Remove from the heat and cool until the ham hock is cool enough so the meat can be removed from the bone. Place the meat, beans, and liquid in a food processor. To the mixture add the onion powder, garlic salt, crushed red pepper, salt, pepper, and lard.

Process for only 4 seconds. The beans should be chopped and have a soupy, liquid consistency. Now drain the liquid from the remaining can of beans and add the beans to the food processor. Process just for a second or two—you want these beans to remain almost whole. Pour the bean mixture back into the pan and cook slowly on low heat, stirring often, until ready to serve. Serve the beans over the cooked rice.

About Stephanie

I recreate your favorite restaurant recipes, so you can prepare these dishes at home. I help you cook dinner, and serve up dishes you know your family will love. You can find most of the ingredients for all of the recipes in your local grocery store.

Comments

Growing up in New Orleans, my family used pickle meat in their red beans,pickled meat is pork, can’t find it here in Va, but I have found recipes on how to pickle the pork butt. Sometimes I use ham hocks,or smoked sausage,mainly cook the beans from scratch, if in a hurry I will use caned beans.

Stephanie, Interesting recipe for sure and I’m going to make it this week. Popeyes Red Beans are produced by Diversified Foods of Louisiana and have been for years. Chef John Folse has been an advisor to the brand. His recipes are available on his website. I think you will find garlic in his recipe. Thanks for the great recipe and keep them coming.

Warning: If you don’t like rants of righteous irritation, then you should pass this comment by.

First, I must say I have made this recipe and it is quite tasty. My frustration, however, comes from years of scouring the Internet for copycat recipes, only to find one after the other, after the next that include a step that COMPLETELY disqualifies the entire recipe as a “copy” of the original. Nearly every version I have found for this particular concoction ends up stating, “…while everyone has heard and the world agrees that there is not a single shred of meat in the original recipe that you have come to my website in a diligent attempt to recreate, because this a food you know by heart and long to make for yourself, you should, now, add this meat, which will impart a better flavor than the taste that you grew up eating and lay in bed dreaming of the next time you can travel to a part of the country that actually has a restaurant to serve this delicacy that you crave. You should follow my instruction, not because it will produce what you’re longing for, but because I’m an arrogant narcissist who knows what you should want, better than you and better than the master chef who created this item in the first place.”

Look, here’s the bottom line: if you don’t know how to make it taste very similar to the original, then don’t lie to the world, calling your recipe a copycat. Just post your insightful little instructions with a generic title, so we can ignore it, with all the other versions that we don’t want to eat.

Smoked Turkey legs has become my favorite substitute for ham hocks and in a pot luck dinner it meets the dietary religous and non pork eater requirements. It is also better for you and I prefer the taste and the benefits of smoke and they provide even more meat than a hock. When I cook beans and smoke turkey legs put the legs in the pot whole then just before finished cooking pull the meat of all the bones in the leg and my dogs love me as I give them the skin for a treat. It is the most ask for dish I prepare.

I haven’t made this yet. In writing down the recipe…I noticed it says pour 2 cans WITH their liquid into the pot……yet the list calls for 2 DRAINED cans of beans. Oops. Do you drain one can or two? I would think 2 because you’re adding water, also, rght? I just notice this and want to get it right.

Wah Gwaan (means Hello) I am from Jamaica and I must say that it was a pleasure to find this recipe… We here on the Island are irie (good) about flavors and since I love to cook it was a pleasure to have made this but added some Island spices to pick it up… Its a beautiful thing to share the love of food and culture, so thank you for all you share!!! I will be looking for more ideas form you… Big up from a small island with a BIG sound

A lot of people will state that their beans are meat free. At one point someone had dropped their list of ingredients here, and it did not contain pork fat. That information is not directly on their website currently. I like using the smoked ham hock because as they cook they render the smoke essence and pork fat. Again, visitors will tell me the original recipe did not contain any meat, so I don’t know how to balance what the recipe people feel like it should be, and my use of the pork.

I make red beans and rice all the time. I don’t use lard, you get enough fat from smoked ham hock. If you cook slow without lid, mash a few beans on side of pot stir to incorporate they will make a thick gravy.

I don’t know what the aversion to lard is, I would use a fat that is naturally solid at room temperature. I would use tallow or butter, it’s the only thing that is natural that will give you the same mouth feel and flavor.

I’ve been making this recipe for about a year now and I think it’s BETTER than Popeye’s in flavor. Many thanks, friend.

I did have a couple of questions. I am not a cook. At the bottom of the recipe you say to “cook” the final beans mixture on “low heat” until “ready to serve.” Thanks in advance for your time on these answers . 1) Earlier in the recipe, we were “simmering” on medium heat. I am assuming that since the final process is to “cook” it that you mean a setting lower than I used to “simmer” it. Correct? 2) I thought “cooking” was teh most important process of any meal. I don’t know what I am looking for in a finally “cooked” batch of beans. That is, can you be more specific on what changes am I looking for in the bean mixture before it is “ready to serve?”

I think I said some misleading terms. Everything in these beans is already cooked technically. I suggest heating on medium heat for awhile, then then reducing the temperature. The beans need a little time to break down, and become creamy.

Actually that is not true, on the ingredients label of Popeyes Red beans and rice, it does say pork fat and smoke flavor (liquid smoke). Maybe Al Copeland never anticipated that label would have to show the ingredients and he wanted to keep it a secret. There may not be any actual meat, but the rendered juice from pork fat is definitely there.

I am sorry if the amount of lard is confusing, it is 1/4 cup plus one more tablespoon of lard. 1/4 cup wasn’t enough, and the next measure up would be what, 1/3, I didn’t quite like that either. Does this help?

Funny, I picked up a block of lard yesterday, although I have no plan for it yet. I suppose it will end up in pie crusts, but red beans has a good ring to it right now. I didn’t have any all winter so there’s no time like the present.

Fran…when they say red pepper in the red beans and rice…is it like the italian shaker pepper flakes? and instead of lard…can I use some reserved bacon grease? Dont want to mess up my popeyes red beans and rice…..lol.

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CopyKat.com is the creation of Stephanie Manley. Stephanie started publishing recipes on the web in 1995 as a means to capture her family recipes in a format that they would not be thrown away. Over the years she has developed many recipes that taste just like restaurant recipes. read more